Evaluation preperation

What have you achieved so far?	Conventions?	What are you pleased with and what needs further improvement?	Good/confident use of the media technology?	Research and planning? Excellent/Good /Satisfactory/Not satisfactory	Audience feedback/ research target audience?
Main product:	Film Noir:	I am really pleased with our final product however, I defiantly feel that we should have used more Film Noir techniques. I think that if we had more time to create our film noir we would have been able to involve more conventions. One thing that I would defiantly want to add is single shot lighting and scenes filmed at night time, although we originally planned to involved night shots due to time constraints we were not able to. I think this would add a whole new dimension to our film and would defiantly improve it. I really like the design for the poster and I think it will be very eye catching. It has been specially designed to appeal to middle aged men and women by involving love. If I was to criticise the poster in one way it would be to say that I don’t think the background which is a plain colour is very interesting however, there is not location that could have been used effectively.	Final Cut:	I did a lot of research and planning throughout the project for each section; film noir, neo-noir, film review, poster and DVD cover. I watched several film noirs and neo- noirs and spent time annotating these, I found this very useful as I was able to develop my ideas. From this I then went on to plan my film, this took a lot of time as I needed to think about every aspect; film name, character names, plot, props, schedule, storyboard, camera angles, sound, script, screenplay and much more. I think that without this our film would not have been at such a high standard. I also researched for my ancillary text, I did this by looking at other posters and reviews. I also did a lot of mock up of posters until I found a design I liked. As I haven’t writer a proper review before I also spent some time writing two other reviews for films that we have watched and getting feedback so that I can improve my film review techniques.	Audience feedback:
My main product is a film noir; it is called Hard Cash and is approximately 7 minutes long. It consists of both film noir and neo noir (shown mainly through black & white and colour). It has a moving production company logo at the start, a main body and ending credits.	I believe we have met a lot of conventions of film noir however, I also think that we missed a view critical conventions out due to time constraints. One well known convention of film noir is black and white, this is something we know we would do from the start. As well as this our narrative meets the film noir convention; corrupt police, death/murder, investigation and plotting. I think that our narrative is very strong and it fits well in the short amount of time that we had to convey it. As well as this other film noir conventions that we have included are femme fatale (we made this character very dominant and wrote the narrative to centre around her), alcohol, costumes , urban areas, low key lighting and deep shots. We also thought carefully about our locations to make them as suited to the genre as possible. One common film noir convention that I think we missed was shooting in at night this was due to time constraints but I think it would improve our film noir.		I used this to edit Hard Cash (Film Noir) it was on the Mac computers, I think I used this software well and I was more skilled after making the music video as preparation for creating a film noir.		I asked a series of questions to people that fell into our different target audeicnes and filmed their answers. These are the questions that they were asked: Do you know what a film noir is? Would you watch a film noir? Why? What film noir features would appeal to you? After watching a film noir does this appeal to you? What did you like about Hard Cash? What didn’t you like about Hard Cash? Was it suitable for your age range? Would you recommend hard cash to a friend? How could we improve our film noir? Please rate our movie out of 5?
	Neo-noir:		Blogs:
	As well as our film containing film noir conventions we wrote the narrative so that it would also have neo-noir conventions (modern day film noir) we used colour scenes to show this and made sure the femme fatale was wearing lots of red to show her power.		I have been using blogs for a while and I found it very easy to pick up using them again. I have always used blogger and I think it is the best for creating media blogs. As well as doing written posts I have also made sure that I have done some video posts. I think I updated my blog regularly throughout the whole project.
Ancillary text:	Film Review:		Film Cameras:		Target audience:
Poster; I have created a poster that is aimed at one of our five target audiences (middle age men and women) The poster consists of the four main characters placed to suggest a love triangle. We will also be creating a poster aimed at another target audience (teenagers).	All three of the film reviews that I have written contain common film review techniques to try and engage the reader. These include; a catchy opening, who is in the film and what the did, a taster of the plot, what genre  it is, personal opinions, entertaing sentence to conclude, rule of three, rhetorical devices, witty, concise, descriptive and persuasive.		I found using the film cameras very easy as this is the 3rd short film that I have made. However, these where new cameras and took both of us a little while to get used to they were very basic though.		1.Middle-ages men and women because of our plot. There is a married couple, life insurance and the 1950's style is very popular in Fashion today. 2. Crime Drama Fans as there are guns, money, sex, police in our film and the plot is a crime unfolding/crime investigation. 3. Film Noir enthusiasts, this is because it has elements of both Film noir and Neo noir. 4. Teenagers, this is because there are teenage actors and producers, it is a thriller/crime genre and there is a love triangle, which is very popular in teen-movies at the moment.
Film Review; I have decided to do a double page spread for my film review. I have already written two reviews one on a film noir (L.A. Confidential) and the other a neo noir (Brick). This works well as Hard Cash is a combination of both. My film reviews double page spread in the magazine is a noir edition.	Poster:		Digital Cameras:
	My poster contains all the main characters and is aimed at the middle aged men and women target audience so I have tried to portray a love triangle. I have used bold text so that everything stands out and is in colour to meet some neo-noir conventions however I have still met film noir conventions by having the femme fatale the most dominant at the front and also wearing red so that she stands out.		I used my own professional DSLR camera to take the photos for mine our joint poster. I was also able to use the schools studio, I know my way around both of these as I am a photography studio. I think that this helped me get it done quickly, efficiently and to a high standard.
			Photoshop:
			Just like the digital camera I was able to use Photoshop with ease as I have used it several times before. I felt very confident at using Photoshop.
			Publisher:
			I used Publisher for both adding text to the poster and the layout/design of the film review double page spread, again I felt very confident about using publisher as we have used it many times before (creating Magazines at AS)